What's REALLY going on in politics in Loudoun County, Virginia

Lyme loonies spend big! (with your money)

After declaring, “The last thing I want to do is to go willy-nilly like last spring”—last spring being when your elected representatives hosed down nine parks in a useless, environmentally destructive, $10,000 chemical assault in order to appease the Lyme Disease loonies who for some reason have taken over the local Republican Party—Chairman Scott York (R-Kincora) voted last week along with the rest of the 9-0 unanimous all-GOP Lyme Loonie friendly Loudoun Board of Supervisors to do what looks an awful lot like . . . more willy-nillyness.

The county’s health officer tried to point out that the scientific evidence shows that spraying chemicals around to kill ticks has been shown to be a totally ineffective strategy to reduce the transmission of Lyme disease, and recommended against the idea. But having created a monster in the form of a “Lyme Disease Commission” (filled, courtesy of your Board, with unscientific zealots), your elected representatives apparently have themselves in a bind if they ignore what they zealots say.

And the zealots say spray!

Not only that, but you elected representatives signed them a blank check last week. The bill, it turns out, will come later, but the staff estimates that it will be up to $50,000 to carry out what they are now hastily assuring the public will be an “environmentally sensitive” application of highly toxic pesticides to broad swaths of public parks this fall, which is rather like assuring us that the military will from now on be using “anatomically sensitive” bullets in their rifles.

Not only that, but the Board approved throwing another $50,000 into urgent and highly effective proposals forwarded from the Lyme Loonie Commission, including $40,000 to print brochures—which no doubt will draw upon the vast public health and scientific resources of Loudoun County Virginia, which far exceed of course what the Federal Centers for Disease Control could possibly provide with its free brochures, web site, experts, and decades of experience actually discovering, researching, educating the public about, and fighting Lyme disease—plus $10,000 to conduct a highly important “community survey” on Lyme disease “awareness.”

Amazing how there’s always $100,000 lying around for these pet projects.